“The players have been outstanding and are getting so many plaudits, and quite rightly so, but they are getting them as a group,” Unsworth buzzed.

“I always say that if the group is strong then the individuals in that group will shine.

“When I got the job two years ago I said that if we don’t seven or eight through then we are failing.

“That is what we looked at two years ago and this group have been successful together and we can get more through.

“We still want more, that is the greedy side of doing my job.”

Callum Connolly made his first-team bow against Southampton last month

Five of Everton’s Academy made their senior bows in the Europa League dead-rubber in 2014, and Unsworth said: “The Krasnodar game was pretty special when the manager decided to go that way, and there’s also been Brendan Galloway and Matty Pennington and then we had Kieran Dowell, Tom Davies and Callum Connolly - those are big numbers.

“It was something I wanted to do when I got the job at Preston and something I wanted to do when I got the job here.

“Getting one or two through is great but when you get big numbers like that it is really, really powerful.”

He added: “We know that our top players, when they get an opportunity with the first-team, they won’t let anybody down.